homosexual panic

homosexual

[ho″mo-sek´shoo-al]

1. pertaining to the same sex; directed toward a person of the same sex; the opposite of heterosexual.

2. one who is sexually attracted to persons of the same sex.

homosexual panic an acute severe episode of anxiety, due to unconscious conflicts involving sexual identity, in which there is the fear or delusional conviction that the person is thought by others to be a homosexual or is in danger of sexual attack by a person of the same sex, often accompanied by agitation, guilt, hallucinations, or depression.

panic

[pan´ik]

acute, extreme anxiety with disorganization of personality and function; panic attacks are characteristic of panic disorder (see anxiety disorders) and may also occur in other mental disorders.

panic disorder an anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent attacks of panic, episodes of intense apprehension, fear, or terror associated with somatic symptoms such as dyspnea, palpitations, dizziness, vertigo, faintness, or shakiness and with psychological symptoms such as feelings of unreality, fear of dying, going crazy, or losing control; there is usually chronic nervousness between attacks. It is almost always associated with agoraphobia and is officially classified as either panic disorder with agoraphobia or panic disorder without agoraphobia. This disorder does not include panic attacks that may occur in phobias when the patient is exposed to the phobic stimulus.

homosexual panic a severe episode of anxiety due to unconscious conflicts involving sexual identity; see also homosexual panic.

ho·mo·sex·u·al pan·ic

an acute, severe attack of anxiety based on unconscious conflicts regarding homosexuality.

(11) John Duvall writes perhaps the most convincing study of Faulknerian homosexual panic and homosocial desire, although he acknowledges that this matrix of desire is always figured along masculine/feminine lines.

(34) Eliot's subsequent treatment of Dino strangely mirrors the strategy of the twentieth-century "'homosexual panic' defense" which she describes as an "ability to permit and 'place,' by pathologizing, the enactment of a socially sanctioned prejudice against one stigmatized minority" (1990, 20).

It is within this context of homosexual censure by both religious and secular worldviews that "homosexual panic" first emerged as a psychological disorder, and then as a legal defense within criminal prosecution.

This initial sympathetic recognition of the soldier complicates itself drastically as Wordsworth revises: homosexual panic asserts itself, danger dominates desire, and Wordsworth more than half detaches the passages themselves, metaphorically emasculating the veteran in the process of attempting to spiritualize his significance.

Ruppel reads two passages where the audience on the Nellie appears to provoke a defensive response in Marlow as homosexual panic; this offers an interesting explanation for Marlow's otherwise obscure comments, an explanation that further fleshes out the ambiguous erotic relationships of the Congo.

After World War II, the pop-psychological concepts and conditions of acting out, homosocial double bind, homosexual panic, and latent homosexuality were among the inoculative measures taken in against the breakdowns, ultimately, of war neurosis.

According to Lauritsen, the good doctor "seems to be exhibiting 'homosexual panic'--hysteria resulting from a clash between intense homosexual desire and social condemnation." No wonder the otherwise loving monster turns against his creator when Frankenstein repudiates him.

With Will & Grace having tasted top-ten success and big corporate sponsors not only endorsing gay charities but pulling away from declared enemies of our consistently more visible community, the cultural trendsetters within our ranks may have good reason to fly into their own version of homosexual panic.

I will use, among other scholarship, Eve Sedgwick's theory of Victorian "male homosexual panic" to culturally and historically contextualize Marlow's discourse, elucidating how the "crowd of men" necessarily inflects and delimits his telling of the tale.

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